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Moore's Law and Intel Mark Milestones in Tech History

Moore's Law and Intel Mark Milestones in Tech History

1965—Gordon Moore Makes a Prediction

Moore, in an article in an electronics trade magazine, predicts that the number of transistors on a semiconductor would double every year, driving technological and business gains.

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1968—Intel Is Born

Moore and Robert Noyce leave Fairchild Semiconductor to start their own chip company, calling it Intel.

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1971—Intel's First Microprocessor

The 4004, Intel's first microprocessor, is released, holding a whopping 2,300 transistors.

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1975—Moore's Law Is Amended

Moore, shown here visiting Intel's headquarters recently, revamps his prediction, changing it from the number of transistors doubling every year to doubling every two years.

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1979—Intel Launches the Foundation of the PC Era

The chip vendor unveils the 8088, which holds 29,000 transistors. Two years later, IBM builds a PC leveraging the 8088, kicking off the personal computing era.

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1982—Intel Hums Along

The company introduces the 80286 chip and its 134,000 transistors. Four years later, the 386 processor launches with 273,000 transistors.

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1989—Intel Goes for 1 Million

The 486 is launched, marking the first time an Intel chip tops the 1-million transistor mark. It comes in with 1.2 million transistors.

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1991—Intel's Increasing Economies of Scale

The chip vendor begins production of 200mm wafers. Larger wafers hold more chips, which can significantly bring down production costs.

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1993—Pentium Hits the Market

The first Pentium processor came with 3.1 million transistors and was followed two years later by the Pentium Pro, with 5.5 million transistors.

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2001—Pentium 4 Pushes Moore's Law Forward

Intel launched the popular chip, housing 42 million transistors.

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2002—The Wafer Grows Some More

Intel begins 300mm wafer production, bringing production costs down even more. The company is continuing to push toward 450mm.

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2004—Hyper-Threading Comes to Town

Intel arms the Pentium 4 with 125 million transistors and its Hyper-Threading technology, which enables multiple threads to run on each processing core, which improves performance and efficiency.

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2008—Next Comes High-k/Metal Gate

Intel begins implementing high-k/metal gate in high-volume manufacturing, which reduced leakage in and helped drive the manufacturing of 45-nanometer chips.

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2012—Intel Introduces 3D Tri-Gate Technology

Intel hits the 1-billion transistor mark with the Core i5 chip and also begins implementing its 3D Tri-Gate transistor architecture, enabling the continuation of Moore' Law at 22nm and below. The architecture increases performance while reducing leakage and power consumption.

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2015—Transistor Count Continues to Rise

The 5th generation Intel Core chip offers 1.3 billion transistors.

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2015: A Time to Celebrate

Intel celebrates the 50th anniversary of Moore's Law during a recent event in San Francisco with the 86-year-old Gordon Moore.